Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



Book a ticket

SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    David Preston 

    Activating History through Praxis: The Role of Practitioner-Historians in Mediating Past and Present Concerns within Design


    Design history has struggled with its disciplinary positioning. Grace Lees-Maffei and Danniel Huppatz critique its legacy as a service subject supporting design education, while Kjetil Fallan has argued for its recognition as a legitimate sub-field within history. By contrast, Guy Julier and Viviana Narotzky describe it as increasingly redundant, an autonomous academic discipline severed from design practice. For them, design historians became ‘dangerously out of touch’ with the profession they aimed to analyse.

    These contrasting perspectives reflect tensions within the discipline, often unacknowledged yet influential in shaping how scholars engage with the field. Some academics have responded by shifting their work into adjacent domains, such as design studies or design methods, where history plays only a peripheral role. But what is lost when historically engaged design research is relocated outside the domain of design history and is there still space for practitioner-historians to contribute meaningfully to the field?

    Dedicated design historians have typically been against attempts to prove through the relevance of history, with efforts to link the past and present understood as instrumentalisation. Meanwhile, from within design, scholars like Andrew Blauvelt have argued for the need to develop more reciprocity between past and present to enable historical enquiry to inform practice. This paper explores how such reciprocity might be enacted meaningfully, without distorting history for presentist ends. 

    I examine strategies for activating history through practice, drawing on Maria Göransdotter’s concept of ‘Present-ing history’, Durepos and Mills’ ‘ANTi-History’, and Davide Nicolini’s ‘strong approach to practice’. These frameworks highlight how design practice can not only serve as a lens through which to study the past, but also generate new forms of situated, embodied historical knowledge. I argue that practitioner-historians are uniquely positioned to construct alternate, invested histories written from within design, offering valuable contributions to both historical scholarship and contemporary practice.



    — David Preston


    Dr David Preston is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and SEDA Recognised Supervisor. David leads ‘Strategy & Identity’, a study platform concentrated on branding and communication design from a social purpose perspective. A design educator of twenty years, his interests encompass pedagogy, knowledge exchange and research. His educational development work has been showcased by Advance HE, while his knowledge exchange projects have received grant-funding from Innovate UK, who recognised his partnership with FreshBritain as ‘Outstanding’. He has presented his research internationally through conferences and invited lectures in Brazil, Finland, India, Netherlands, Portugal and the US. David’s doctorate examined how the emergence of programmatic branding impacted the professional development of graphic design practices in Britain. His single-authored monograph, The Development of Corporate Design, is published with Bloomsbury Academic.